The present invention relates to an integrated circuit (IC) tag (hereinafter representatively called “IC card”) mounting an IC chip storing information and a compact antenna, and more particularly to an IC tag mounting two IC chips operating in different frequency bands and two antennas operating in a dual band.
IC tags of a card size mounting an IC chip and a compact antenna, i.e., IC cards, are prevailing recently under the merchandise names such as Suica (registered trademark) and Edy (registered trademark). An IC card mounts a small IC chip having a width of about 0.4 mm, a depth of about 0.4 mm and a height of about 0.1 mm near the center of a transmission antenna having a length of about 52 mm and an operation frequency of 2.45 GHz. As the IC card is held to a reader/writer (read terminal), information recorded in the IC card can be read in a non-contact manner. It is desired that the communication distance of the IC card be as long as possible. Therefore, a loop antenna, a dipole antenna and the like of various shapes have been devised as an antenna to be mounted on the IC card in order to improve the radio field strength and directivity.
Depending upon the circulation circumstances of IC cards, a user is required in some cases to have two or more IC cards, for example, to use IC cards by discriminating between Suica (registered trademark) and Edy (registered trademark). In order to eliminate such inconvenience, techniques on a hybrid-type non-contact IC card having functions of two IC cards have been disclosed (for example, refer to JPA-2004-240899 (paragraph numbers 0012 to 0021 and FIG. 1)). According to the techniques, two antennas and two IC chips operating in different frequency bands are mounted on one IC card to realize the functions of two IC cards by one IC card.